Monday, December 25, 2017

2015 kicked my ass. 2016 kicked everybody's ass. 2017
discovered our collective asses were numb from all the kicking, so a
series of sucker punches, rope burns, paper cuts, and other attacks
ensued. But still we stand, maybe more flecked with red than green today, with wobbly knees, but fully upright.

My experience has been that it's better not to write at length in the midst of an existential crisis - there's too many opportunities for narcissism, bathos, purple prose, and in general, putting something into print that I will regret later. As written, NOT by Abraham Lincoln or Mark Twain but by Maurice Switzer, it is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.

So yeah, as has been the pattern over these years of attrition, I didn't see enough movies, especially the ones that would actually benefit from my elevation, thus this list carries an asterisk and a side-eye from the cineastes that matter. Nevertheless, The Top 13 of 2017* (your mileage may vary):

13. I, TONYA

12. SLEIGHT

11. DUNKIRK

10. BABY DRIVER

9. PROFESSOR MARSTON AND THE WONDER WOMEN

8. THE SHAPE OF WATER

7. mother!

6. LADY BIRD

5. THE FLORIDA PROJECT

4. GET OUT

3. NOCTURAMA

2. PHANTOM THREAD

1. DAWSON CITY: FROZEN TIME

"Life's a mess, dude, but we're all just doing the best we can, you know."

Thursday, January 12, 2017

Sometimes, the unexpected pleasures of watching your favorite films more than, well, the average person revisits a favorite film, is that you begin to see wild symmetries and convergences among them that make you appreciate them even more.

If you watch THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW enough times, you'll notice that someone on the production was a Russ Meyer fan. After all, I don't think anyone at 20th Century-Fox was thinking about corporate synergy in such a fashion to pressure the art director into putting a BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS soundtrack album in Columbia's bedroom. This was intentional homage. For that matter, there's certainly a case to be made for kinship between the two counterculture musicals, what with both telling a tragicomic saga of nice kids in a wild new environment of sex and drugs being manipulated by a sociopath of fluid sexuality. At the very least, they're a dynamite double feature.

However, upon a recent viewing of Meyer's other stone classic, FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL!, I began to see connections that had eluded me before, little things that made me speculate as to whether just maybe, amidst all the direct allusions to monster movies and Old Dark House mysteries, there was also some buried homage being paid to this chronicle of go-go girls gone-gone amok, at a time when only seriously savage film lovers would have picked up on them...

"I would like, if I may, to take you...on a strange journey..."

"...two young, ordinary, healthy kids..."

"...there were dark storm clouds - heavy, black, and pendulous - towards which they were driving."

"It was a night out they were going to remember...for a very long time."

"Say, do any of you guys know how to Madison?"

"This isn't the Junior Chamber of Commerce..."

"How forceful you are...such a perfect specimen of manhood. So...dominant!"

"That's no way to behave on your first day out."

"Do you want her to see you, like this?"

"He had a certain naive charm, but no muscle."

"You better wise up..."

"Suddenly, you get a break."

"All the pieces seem to fit into place."

"And Paradise is to be mine."

"It's not often we receive visitors here, let alone offer them hospitality."

"I'm sure you're not spent yet."

"Such strenuous living I just don't understand..."

"This in itself was proof that their host was a man of little morals..."

"...and some persuasion."

"What further indignities were they to be subjected to?"

"How did it happen? I understood you were supposed to be watching!"

"Food has always played a vital role in life's rituals: The breaking of bread, the last meal of the condemned man... and now this meal ."

"However informal it might appear, you can be sure that there was to be little bonhomie."

"Oh come on...admit it, you liked it didn't you? There's no crime in giving yourself over to pleasure."

"If only we hadn't made this journey...If only we were among friends...or sane persons."

"Even smiling makes my face ache."

"Well, unfortunately for you all, the plans are to be changed."

"I ask for nothing..."

"And you shall receive it..."

"... in abundance!"

"You won't find [me] quite the easy mark you imagine."

"What a sucker you've been, what a fool. The answer was there all the time."

{"Chest of steel! Back of steel! Shoulder of steel!"}

"And now...your time has come. Say goodbye to all of...this..."

"...and hello...to oblivion!"

"I made you, and I can break you just as easily!"

"And then she cried out..."

"STOOOOOOP!!!"

"The game has been disbanded."

"You should leave now while it is still possible."

"And crawling...on the planet's face..."

"...some insects...called the human race..."

"...lost in time..."

"...lost in space..."

"...and meaning."

"Meeeean-iiiing..."

acknowledgements to blogger/Tweeter @jodamico who, independent of me, previously had a similar inkling, and to Al Ewing and Sarah Peploe at Freaky Trigger, where many of the best images for this essay came from